The Serious Fraud Office has launched a "formal investigation" into allegations relating to murky payments made by Japanese camera maker Olympus. No surprise, perhaps, given that former chief executive Michael Woodford has been speaking to SFO investigators for some weeks.

The US federal authorities — never shy to probe into the dealings of overseas companies far beyond American shores — have also been taking a keen interest in the affair. It is less clear, meanwhile, what the appetite is among Japanese prosecutors for unravelling this messy international payments web, spanning Tokyo, the Cayman Islands, Delaware and the UK.

SFO sources insists there are grounds for suspecting that at least one serious and complex fraud offence has been committed under British law, hence the need for an SFO investigation. Certainly some of the allegations have concerned advisory fees paid by Olympus in relation to the $2bn takeover in 2008 of UK medical instruments group Gyrus.

Whether the inquiries – even if they throw up evidence of wrongdoing – will lead to a fraud prosecution being brought in a British court remains to be seen. (Certainly, there can be no question of any charges being brought under the new Bribery Act which only came into effect in June this year. US foreign corrupt practices legislation has been in place for a good deal longer – and has been used to great effect prosecuting non-US companies such as BAE and Siemens.)

Privately the SFO concedes this investigation, if it uncovers relevant evidence, could still end up being no more than a support exercise for prosecuting bodies elsewhere in the world. That would not be unprecedented. SFO director Richard Alderman has made a point of loosening the definitions of what constitutes the launch of a "formal investigation" such that routine co-operation work with prosecutors in other jurisdictions can in some cases be presented as an SFO inquiry.

The result has been some dramatic headlines that give the impression that British fraud investigators are building cases in relation many all the biggest corporate scandals around the world. For example, the SFO has in recent years trumpeted the launch of two separate probes into the London arms of US businesses AIG and Madoff Investment Securities. To many fraud experts, including several figures within the SFO, these were multi-jurisdiction inquiries that were always going to be lead by the vastly better resourced US authorities. Both were later quietly dropped. (A US inquiry into AIG executive also failed to unearth evidence to prosecute).

This is in contrast to the approach of Alderman's predecessors, who typically preferred to keep co-operation activities on a low profile.

Whether the latest official SFO investigation into Olympus is destined to generate more than just a brief blizzard of headlines, it may be too early to tell. The case appears to have a slightly stronger UK jurisdictional focus than either AIG or Madoff. That said, Alderman is presiding over a 25% reduction in his budget, which will sink below £30m in three years. Moreover, he has made it clear he wants to divert significant resources to new bribery investigations and prosecutions. If this case can be better pursued by counterparts elsewhere in the world, it is hard to imagine the stretched SFO putting up much of a protest.